Get out your rifles and blaze orange: The Minnesota firearms deer hunting season opens a half hour before sunrise Saturday morning.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources expects a good 2013 deer hunt.

“There’s nothing that beats Minnesota’s firearm deer hunting season,” Detroit Lakes DNR Area Wildlife Manager Blane Klemek said. “I’ve got blaze orange fever right now. It’s a good time, it’s a festive time, it’s important to Minnesota’s economy, and it’s just a great, great family activity.”

While Minnesota’s deer population remains strong at around 1 million deer, Klemek said the DNR in recent years is looking at increasing that population. The DNR used input from many different sources in the early 2000s to set up an intensive harvest management plan.

“Committees of people who had no affiliation with the DNR back in those days decided what populations our deer should be at within each permit area,” Klemek said. “So we took citizens’ input and were looking at reducing numbers at that time. And now, the DNR’s actually in a sort of population growth mode. We’re looking at increasing numbers in some areas.”

Hunters in the Detroit Lakes permit areas will see these changes this year, as some areas have become a permit only area. Permit area 241 south of Detroit Lakes is a managed deer area where a hunter need not apply for an antlerless permit. A deer of either sex can be taken with the initial deer license.

Areas 266 to the west of Detroit Lakes, 297 and 298 to the north, and 251 which is Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, are now lottery permit areas, which is a change from recent years. A hunter in those areas needed to apply for an antlerless permit by Sept. 5 to be eligible to take a doe.

“Deer populations were high,” Klemek said. “We had several back-to-back winters that were real mild and you know, you get deer in the soybeans, you get deer in the corn, you get deer on the highways and pretty soon a lot of people are complaining about it.”

“It’s not a perfect science, this deer management thing, but that’s how we do it.”

Klemek said the amount of crops in the field may have an effect on this weekend’s hunter success, too. More crops mean fewer deer in the woods and more in the cornfields.

“Corn harvest is probably at about 50 percent,” he said. “Hunter success is generally less when there’s more corn standing. Deer find food and shelter in cornfields. But for guys that have access to those cornfields, a well-organized, safe deer drive sometimes pans out for them pretty well.”